——

  Poe and Shimo, dismissing the undisguised stares of the villagers as normal rustic nosiness, walked up the street and turned into the Allée des Lices. Shimo pushed open the door of number 3, and they stepped inside. In the kitchen, Georgette held her breath, listening to the soft sounds of their footsteps on the tiled floor.

  Poe bent over the case. “Let’s make sure it’s all there, shall we?” He spun the tumblers on the lock, snapped up the two fastenings, and opened the case, laying it flat on the table.

  Georgette, her ears straining, heard the succession of clicks, the faint squeak of hinges. The case was being opened. Not ten feet away, the secret was being revealed, the secret that she alone in the entire village could see, and later describe in all its fascinating detail. How could she resist?

  “Bonjour, bonjour, bonjour!” She burst from the kitchen, her eyes darting toward the open case. “Un petit café pour les messieurs?”

  The two men spun around, Shimo falling instinctively into a position of combat readiness until he took in the short and decidedly unthreatening figure in the yellow baseball cap.

  “Who the hell is she?” said Poe.

  Shimo relaxed. “The femme de ménage.” He moved to block Georgette’s view of the case. “No coffee.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “Go in there.”

  Eyes wide, Georgette backed through the door. Poe resumed his study of the contents of the case.

  ——

  “Bon,” said Moreau. “Let’s go.” The gendarmes put down their newspapers and rose as one, and the group began to move out of the café and into the main street, the eyes of Saint-Martin upon them. Truly, this was a most irregular Sunday.

  ——

  Tuzzi’s Mercedes, driven with enormous brio by young Benito, swept up the village road and swerved over to the café.

  “You!” called Tuzzi from the car. “Where’s the Allée des Lices?”

  The startled gendarme barely had time to point the way before Benito applied a heavy foot to the accelerator and took off, leaving rubber scars on the road and Bennett with his jaw dropping in surprise. “But that’s Tuzzi,” he said to Moreau. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  ——

  Benito stopped the car at the entrance to the alley and shrugged. Too narrow. “Stay here,” said Tuzzi. “I’ll be two minutes.” In his haste, he left the passenger door open, and as Benito leaned across to close it, he saw, reflected in the rearview mirror, a group of figures coming up the street. What a busy place it was for a little village. He tuned in to Radio Monte Carlo and thought about girls.

  ——

  The door to number 3 was ajar. Tuzzi pushed it open, paused in the hall, and moved through to the living room, his feet, in espadrilles, soundless on the floor. He was almost in the room before Poe and Shimo were aware of him.

  For a second, maybe two, they all were motionless—Poe standing with the case in his hand, Shimo to one side, Tuzzi’s bulk filling the doorway. Poe was the first to move. With a sideways chop of his free hand, as if to push away an unwanted dog, he spoke. “Deal with him, Shimo.”

  The Japanese crouched and turned. His preference—a foot-administered frontal lobotomy achieved by a roundhouse kick to the temple—was impossible. Tuzzi was protected by the frame of the doorway. It would have to be mawashi-geri-gedan, foot to pubic bone, followed by hadaka-jime, the naked strangle. He took two steps forward, seeing as if in slow motion Tuzzi’s hand coming up from his hip, holding a gun.

  ——

  Later, for many years and to many rapt audiences, Georgette would describe the events of the next few seconds, as seen from the kitchen door. Shimo’s foot, with the unimaginable velocity developed by years of training, struck the Italian on the appointed spot. There was an explosion as Tuzzi doubled forward, the bullet released by the involuntary spasm of his trigger finger passing within inches of Shimo’s shoulder, its trajectory rising before it reached its accidental destination. Poe grew a third eye in his head, and died without losing his astonished expression.

  The gendarmes entered the house like a torrent, pointing their weapons at everyone in sight. Shimo stood with his back against a wall and folded his arms. Georgette raised her hands. Poe bled silently onto the carpet. Tuzzi, an oversized fetus, whimpered on the floor.

  Moreau could hardly have wished for a more dramatic climax to the operation. His pipe forgotten, he moved to the center of the room and knelt by Poe’s body. “Bonfils, call homicide in Avignon. Photographer. Ambulance. The usual.”

  Georgette, now that the shock was beginning to subside, saw a further opportunity to take part in the proceedings. “Monsieur? Aristide my cousin is the village ambulancier. He can arrange the dead one. Also that other, he who moans on the floor. It is very large, a four-body ambulance.”

  Moreau got to his feet and looked down at Poe. “He is evidence, madame. He must under no circumstances be moved until photographs and measurements have been taken.”

  Georgette came over to take a closer look at the body. “And my carpet? What of my carpet? See how it stains.”

  A sigh of exasperation from Moreau. “Calm yourself, madame. The state will replace it. Bonfils! Make a note of the carpet.” He looked across the room at Bennett. “Now, monsieur. To the best of your knowledge, is this the genuine case?”

  Bennett left Anna at the doorway and stepped over Poe’s body. “I think so. May I open it?” Georgette craned her neck for a better view as he fumbled with the lock. Thirty-six twenty-four thirty-six. The vials, snug in their beds of foam rubber, the folders and printouts—everything was as he remembered seeing it before he’d left it with Georgette. He looked up and nodded at Moreau.

  Leaving two men to guard the corpse, they left the house. The villagers of Saint-Martin were then treated to the sight of a slow-moving procession headed by the bent, shuffling figure of Tuzzi, supported by Benito and followed by Shimo, the three of them covered by the guns of the gendarmes. Sunday-morning business was abandoned as the butcher, the baker, and Madame Joux from the épicerie attached themselves to the rear of the group, showering Georgette with questions, which, with enormous pleasure, she declined to answer.

  ——

  Bennett put his arm around Anna and felt the ridge of tension in her shoulders. “Are you OK?”

  “I’ll be fine. He didn’t know what hit him, did he?”

  Bennett thought of the expression of disbelief on Poe’s face, the neat hole above one eyebrow, the surprised gape of his mouth. “No. He didn’t.”

  “Can we get out of here? I’ve just about had it with guns and policemen.”

  But there were, as a jubilant Moreau said when they reached the café, certain formalities to complete, the first of which was a call to Chevalier. He left Georgette, Anna, and Bennett at the bar, where Léon, with great ceremony, insisted on pouring them glasses of his second-best champagne.

  The café had never seen such a crowd, and a knot of villagers soon formed around Georgette, who, in her starring role of eyewitness, was rationing her answers rather more carefully than her consumption of champagne. The old men at the back couldn’t hear, and shouted for her to speak up. Anna and Bennett escaped to the comparative peace of an outside table.

  Moreau came out to join them, glowing with satisfaction. “I don’t think we need detain you any longer.” He put the car keys and their passports on the table. “A driver will take you to Les Beaumettes to pick up your car. All that remains for me to say—”

  “Monsieur Moreau?” Léon, wide-eyed and flustered, called from the door, his hand up to his ear making the shape of a telephone. “It’s the office of the president.”

  The café fell silent, every ear straining to listen as Moreau took the call. He stood to attention. He nodded several times. By the time he put down the phone, he seemed to have grown several inches.

  “Well!” he said to Anna and Bennett. “I must tell you that the president of the Republic is pleased. Not only with the total success of the operation”—he paused for a self-effacing shrug—“but also with your helpful part in this affair.” He dropped his voice. “Entre nous, there is talk of official recognition for your services to French agriculture. Be sure to leave an address with the captain at Les Beaumettes.” He looked at his watch and gave an exaggerated sigh. “You must excuse me. There is still much to do. Dead men make paperwork, you know.” After shaking hands with them both, he returned to the melee around the bar, where Georgette, her cap now slightly askew, was describing how she had felt against her cheek the wind—the deadly breath—of the fatal bullet as it passed.

  ——

  Anna and Bennett drove away from the gendarmerie, half expecting to hear the sound of a police siren. Bennett’s eyes flicked constantly to the mirror, the guilty tic of a fugitive. It wasn’t until they reached the ruin above Buoux that they began to believe their liberty.

  Bennett dusted off the bag and tossed it onto the back seat. A million dollars, less the price of a tractor. “We’ve got enough for lunch,” he said. “I think we’ve earned it.”

  He’d thought about it often, during the past few days—where they’d go, how it would feel to be together and safe—until it had assumed the importance of much more than a meal. It would mark an ending and a beginning, a celebration and a reward. And for such an occasion, there is nowhere in the world quite like France at noon on a fine summer Sunday. The only problem is an embarrassment of choice. Bennett had eventually decided on an old favorite, Le Mas Tourteron, a substantial stone farmhouse on the road below Gordes, its cooking and its courtyard an irresistible combination.

  He turned into the parking area and squeezed the Peugeot in between a Jaguar with Swiss plates and an unkempt local Renault 5. Anna got out of the car and looked through the entrance to the courtyard—tables dressed in white and blue, dappled light, huge pots of flowers against the walls, the clients studying their menus like prayer books. She pushed a hand through her hair, glanced down, and shook her head.

  “A place like this. They’ll never let me in.”

  Bennett looked at her dust-caked boots, her rumpled jeans, her T-shirt, which showed signs of great fatigue. And then her face, and the glow of her eyes. You’d have to be blind to resist, he thought.

  “You look hungry,” he said. “They’ll let you in.”

  He picked up the bag and took her hand. They were greeted in the courtyard by the smiling husband of Elisabeth, the chef, who showed them to a corner table where their closest neighbors were geraniums. “Would you like me to take the bag while you have lunch?”

  Bennett grinned at Anna. “No,” he said. “Thank you. I think we’ll hang on to it.”

  ALSO BY PETER MAYLE

  “Peter Mayle [is] something of a wonder … chronicling the scene around him in irresistible prose.”

  —Time

  A DOG’S LIFE

  A Dog’s Life, enhanced by the splendidly whimsical drawings of Edward Koren, is the irresistible memoir of Boy, Peter Mayle’s adopted dog of uncertain origins and dubious hunting skills, who has clearly inherited Mr. Mayle’s gift for pedigree prose and biting wit.

  Fiction/Pets/0-679-76267-1

  HOTEL PASTIS

  In this novel of romance, adventure, and tongue-in-cheek suspense, Simon Shaw has decided to chuck it all and transform an abandoned police station in the Lubéron into the small but world-class Hotel Pastis, only to discover the hard way that an inept band of bank robbers have chosen the neighboring village for their next heist.

  Fiction/0-679-75111-4

  TOUJOURS PROVENCE

  Taking up where his much-loved A Year in Provence left off, Peter Mayle offers the reader another funny, beautifully (and deliciously) evocative tour of life in Provence. This is an enchanting portrait of a place whose characters are full of the wit, charm, and tales only those who live there could possess.

  Travel/0-679-73604-2

  A YEAR IN PROVENCE

  In this witty and warm-hearted account that was a major national bestseller, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in the French countryside. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.

  Travel/0-679-73114-8

  Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:

  1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).

 

 

  Peter Mayle, Anything Considered

 

 

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